Two major new dinosaur shows air this September on BBC1 and Discovery Channel. Seems a bit of a coincidence and they'll inevitably draw comparison. Both appear to be a cut above some of the more recent efforts of the past few years.

On September 4 and 11, the four-hour DINOSAUR REVOLUTION will present dinosaurs like you've never seen them before - combining the artistic and storytelling talents of the world's most renowned dinosaur illustrators with the most up-to-date discoveries about dinosaurs, their culture and behaviors. DINOSAUR REVOLUTION makes its world premiere on Discovery Channel Sunday, September 4 and Sunday, September 11 from 9-11PM ET/PT each night.

As DINOSAUR REVOLUTION illustrates, dinosaurs were far more active, complex and colorful than ever imagined - more like birds than sluggish reptiles. The series transports viewers to various points of place and time to highlight a host of new behaviors, including exotic mating dances (Gigantoraptor, a dinosaur resembling a 17-foot tall turkey), the inner workings of T-Rex's nuclear family (Tyrannosaurus Rex, who was anything but dull and slow), and the underwater birthing of a huge marine reptile Mosasaurus. DINOSAUR REVOLUTION will also introduce new creatures like a Jurassic flying squirrel (Volaticotherium) and frogs so big they could eat dinosaurs (Beelzebufo).

DINOSAUR REVOLUTION is produced by Creative Differences for Discovery Channel. Erik Nelson is executive producer for Creative Differences; Alan Eyres and Brooke Runnette are executive producers for Discovery Channel.

Planet Dinosaur is a BBC production, which much like their earlier Walking With Dinosaurs, comprises of 6 half-hour episodes, starting 14th September. It will be followed up by a one-hour 3D special in the new year.

The last decade has been a golden age of discoveries for palaeontologists around the world: more dinosaurs have been discovered in the past 10 years than the previous 200 years. But the next generation of children won't be talking about Tyrannosaurus Rex or Diplodocus because bigger, badder and altogether more bizarre dinosaurs have been uncovered across the globe.

In an astonishing six-part series, BBC One brings to life the most incredible creatures that viewers never knew existed. From Spinosaurus, the biggest killer to ever walk the Earth, to the immense sea-monster Predator X, and the deadly cannibalistic Majunasaurus – dinosaurs were more monstrous, more horrific and bizarre than ever before imagined. Combining a 3D graphic world, incredible CGI and stunning photo-real fight scenes, this is a whole new perspective on dinosaurs.

Planet Dinosaurs (6x30 minutes) airs on BBC One in 2011. The series was commissioned by Kim Shillinglaw (Commissioner for Science and Natural History), and is executive produced by Andrew Cohen (Head of Science, London Factual) for BBC Productions.

yeah, Terra Nova. I only mentioned that briefly as there's another thread on it in the forum. It's a different sort of show, but just the same, 3 high-profile dinosaur shows in one month is worthy of note.

They even mentioned basing one segment after an old Looney Tunes short.
This should make a contrast with the more sombre BBC approach. The other difference is that the BBC show is going all-digital for the background environments, whereas Discovery used real filmed locations.

The stories look to be well told, with comic timing and wait-for-it punchlines. But despite this their dinosaurs are by far the most accurate, well ever. This is because David Krentz did the models.

well hey, if it really sucks, you can always y'know, change the channel.

... look, I'm aware that Discovery don't exactly have a great track record with this stuff. Actually their last few dino shows were utterly woeful. An insult to art and science.

But the people behind this show are of a much better pedigree. Ricardo Delgado did Age of Reptiles, and David Krentz well, there's no one better. Discovery may still find a way to screw it up, but with the calibre of people involved in this, I'm sure there'll still be enough there for it to be worth checking out if you have an interest.

The final 2 episodes of Dinosaur Revolution are showing tonight at 9PM on The Science Channel in the US.

They were supposed to air on Discovery on Sunday, but apparently they got bumped because of September 11th sensitivity(really you'd think they'd have figured that out ahead of time).

I managed to watch the first 2 episodes(unfortunately not on TV), and there's some pretty cool stuff in them. The Allosaurus episode was particularly good. This was the European Allosaurus recently found in Portugal, so the Jurassic fauna were similar but slightly different from their better-known American counterparts.

I liked Revolution. I don't see why everybody was complaining "OMG SLAPSTICK HUMOR NOO!" like they thought it was gonna be an episode of Tom&Jerry. It was done right and realistically. Has nobody watched a documentary of animals in the wild doing something that would get a chuckle out of us? Doesn't seem different at all IMO.

I like that they're introducing dinosaurs who aren't well known like Gigantoraptor and Torvosaurus. Torvosaurus is one of my favorite Jurassic theropods too.

Planet Dinosaur looks fucking awesome.
Oooh man. DAT SPINO <3
I can't wait to see that fight between him and Carcharodontosaurus. Can't believe I've never thought of them duking it out before even though I knew they thrived in the same time period and region.

The render is great and all, but with that face painted like a skull and all them little spikes he just looks like some bad cartoon monster.

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When you think about it, alot of animals in the animal kingdom have unique markings

It's hard to say what color they were on the outside, so I don't mind some creativity thrown in.
When you think about it, a face colored like a skull makes evolutionary sense. It's frightening, intimidating, it's like a sign above the animal that says "Warning: Do not fuck with". It'd sure cause any other animal it came across to run like Hell.

Planet Dinosaur starts tonight, I LOVED Walking with Dinosaurs, which was a previous dinosaur documentry on BBC, so i'm hoping that this is similar, and it's narrated by John Hurt, which is bloody awesome

I liked Revolution. I don't see why everybody was complaining "OMG SLAPSTICK HUMOR NOO!" like they thought it was gonna be an episode of Tom&Jerry. It was done right and realistically. Has nobody watched a documentary of animals in the wild doing something that would get a chuckle out of us? Doesn't seem different at all IMO.

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I don't mind slapstick so long as the dinosaurs themselves are accurate. Behaviour is mostly speculative anyway. Might as well have some fun with them. The only thing that kinda bothered me is how Discovery tend to hype things with their 'revolution' theme where 'everything we thought we knew was wrong'. A lot of this stuff was known for more than the past 30 years, it just took a while for 50s-style dinosaurs to fade away.

Torvosaurus is awesome. The european fossils were roughly T.rex size. But it's more primitive and presumably Allosaurus had a competitive edge. Megalosaurs were old-school. I liked how they showed the carnivore hierarchy in that episode. Would've been nice if they'd had the budget to include Ceratosaurus as well.

Just watched Planet Dinosaur, it was great, I liked how they actually showed new information about the dinosaurs and evidence of how they hunted, but I can the frequent interruptions of the action to tell us stuff annoying some people, particularly fans of Walking with Dinosaurs, where it was just action (as much as I like the information, it did start to grate on me a bit when the Spinosaurus was doing something, then it'd suddenly cut out to tell us something).
also,

the fight between Spinosaurus and Carcharodontosaurus wasn't particluarly impressive, it was pretty short and neither of them killed one another, they just bit and scratched one another

Just watched Planet Dinosaur, it was great, I liked how they actually showed new information about the dinosaurs and evidence of how they hunted, but I can the frequent interruptions of the action to tell us stuff annoying some people, particularly fans of Walking with Dinosaurs, where it was just action (as much as I like the information, it did start to grate on me a bit when the Spinosaurus was doing something, then it'd suddenly cut out to tell us something).
also,

the fight between Spinosaurus and Carcharodontosaurus wasn't particluarly impressive, it was pretty short and neither of them killed one another, they just bit and scratched one another

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I'd agree with that assessment. They did an excellent job of presenting pretty much everything we know about Spinosaurs, but it did tend to interupt the flow of the episode. The diagramatic visualisations were very well done showing the fragmentary nature of the actual fossils, and where they represent in the overall skeleton.

I was somewhat disappointed with the actual dinosaur graphics. They use a muddier colour palette, not as colourful as Dinosaur Revolution. Although the dinosaurs themselves are in many ways more detailed and accurately modelled than those of Walking with Dinosaurs, the way they were presented didn't feel quite as naturalistic.

I agree the edutainment does break the tention to much it's much better played straight as natural history then perhaps with a Supersense style show for each episode to back it up with interviews and science stuff on BBC4 or BBC 3.

Much how Doctor Who is Supported by Confidential - that way ou get a purer show and also the explanations of why they chose those scenes - it would also compensate for the 30 minute shows being a bit short too.